Guitar Heros

Sunday, December 24, 2006

Who's Your Guitar Hero?

You know, I was just sitting here thinking about guitar hero's, and what a guitar hero is, and why.

I've been playing guitar for many years now, in fact, more than I like to recall, and I have had many guitar hero's in my lifetime.

I guess, my first guitar hero would have to be Ace Frehley from Kiss. In fact, Ace, in my opinion, is to this day, one of the unsung guitar hero's of the 70's and early 80's. To this day, when I pull out some of my old Kiss albums and kick back and listen, Ace played some pretty incredible stuff for that time era.

Anyway, after spending a number of years getting my ears totally blown out by Kiss, and as I got a little older (about 17 or so), I stumbled onto another group that fit right into my life style at the time. That group was none other than Black Sabbath.

Tony Iommi, guitarist of Black Sabbath, showed me a whole new way of looking at guitar playing than I had ever heard before. Some of the things Tony could do with the sounds he pulled out of that old SG was amazing.

To say I was sold on rock-n-roll at that point was an understatement!

And then the music and groups came on like a wave... From Led Zeppelin, to The Who, Michael Shanker, Ronnie Montrose, Jimi Hendrix, and on and on it goes...

So, getting back to guitar hero's.. I am finding it hard to say that I have had one or two guitar hero's that I would call my ultimate guitar hero. There have been so many guitarist's that have helped shape my outlook on playing, that saying any one of them was my ultimate guitar hero would be letting down the others that so righteously contributed to my playing style.

I don't know.. Can you as a guitar player name any one or two guitar players that really are the end all / be all of your guitar playing style?